GEA Courtoy, a manufacturer of tabletting equipment for the pharmaceutical, food and chemical industries, has expanded its PERFORMA tablet press range with the PERFORMA S. The company has claimed that PERFORMA S is capable of producing up to 374000 tablets per hour when fitted with conventional dies and up to 389000 tablets per hour when its Die Shells technology is used to increase productivity.
Reportedly, at the core of the PERFORMA range is the EDD (Exchangeable Die Disc) concept: the middle section of the turret, containing the dies, can easily be detached from the upper and lower punch guide parts and handled separately. The PERFORMA S features Courtoy’s tablet weight control system and can be supplied with the Courtoy Dual Control system, which enables the monitoring of tablet weight and hardness simultaneously, yet independently from one another.
The design of the PERFORMA turret makes it possible to either remove the entire turret from the machine, or simply lift and swing the upper section of the turret out of the compression zone, clearing the way for the EDD to be lifted out manually by the operator. GEA Courtoy has said that an EDD exchange takes less than 30 minutes and does away with the need to have two turrets to achieve fast product change-over. This way, the investment cost of a new tablet press is significantly reduced.
The PERFORMA S is available with conventional dies or Die Shells that come with thin walls. Due to the reduced external diameter of each die, the number of punch positions on the Die Disc can be increased and as a result machine output can go up by 33%. The company has added that the minimal thickness of the die walls and the perfect levelling of the Die Shells with the Die Disc surface combine to optimise yield, as there is virtually no powder build-up on the die wall rims.